Tuesday, February 13, 2007

Startup Princess

I've been reading posts on Start Up Princess. This site from Provo is putting together a network of women entrepreneurs.

Yes, I know, I am not supposed to be there. I was actually harvesting links from the site. That's where I found Raw Melissa. Anyway, I think groups like this show entrepreneurship at its finest. The basic metaphor for the site is that the market is a magic kingdom. The goal of the start up princess is to help motivate startups by providing resources including access to venture capital and a to a network of fairy godmothers. A fairy godmothers is a successful entrepreneur willing to help other women achieve their entrepreneurial dreams.

It is a fun metaphor, and people are putting together some really worthwhile ventures such as the Now I Can Therapy Center.

Unfortunately, many of the start ups listed on the site seem to be in marginal industries like scrapbooking. One thing that I worry about is that, since so many of the primary industries in our society are dominated by a few well financed conglomerate, we end up burning our entrepreneurial spirit on on low margin markets.

Again, I was on the site to do link harvesting, and a large number of the links are already broken as people's stab at marginal markets failed to manifest. Anyway, I thought I would blog on this resource because it might add more power to the Start Up Princess's magic wand.

3 comments:

Kelly King Anderson
said...

Hello Kevin!Thanks for the kind and generous post about Start Up Princess. We are having fun and hopefully making a difference for women entrepreneurs. I appreciate that we have a growing audience thanks to people sharing link love...and spreading the word.

BTW, the scrapbooking industry is HUGE, it's a $3 Billion dollar industry and Scrapbooks.com who is a part of our "kingdom" at Start Up Princess.com did $2M last year. That's darn good, don't ya think for a company started by a woman entrepreneur, a Start Up Princess? ;) I would add that yes, we have a range of start ups from non-profits to random mom-related products, but the whole point is to celebrate, educate, and network and in 7 months we're getting traction and have over 100 members internationally. We are now working on a redesign FINALLY) to reflect our fun image and brand.

Make a Wish, Make it Happen,Kelly Anderson, Founder/Fairy GodmotherStart Up Princess.com

I love what you are doing with StartUp Princess. For that matter, I am a big supporter of the scrapbook industry.

The reason I brought up scrapbooking is that it shows the challenge of helping people focus their entrepreneurial spirits on growing industries. Yes, scrapbooking is a huge industry. The question for young entrepreneurs is how much the industry will grow? Is the industry is a consolidation stage?

My guess is that 3 years ago, scrapbooking was a good industry to get into. Today, it is a different market. While I applaud the startup that made their scrapbooking dream work, I would encourage young entrepreneurs to look at other markets ... unless they actually have a unique product or have access to an immediate market in scrapbooking. For example, I think there is still a great opportunities that do things like combine genealogy research with scrapbooking.

Hi Kevin,You're right, scrapbooking is a crowded space and could be challenging to enter unless you are really innovative. Fortunately our friends at www.scrapbooks.com invented it 25 years ago and they had a great time staying ahead at the beginning and now it's more challenging...but they still own the URL and all that, so that helps!

We try and emphasize to our Start Up Princess "Dream in development" members that they should try to be innovative and "fill a need."